November 12, 2012

Getting Graphic: "The Walking Dead Vol. 5" by Robert Kirkman

The
Walking Dead Vol. 5: The Best Defense

written by Robert Kirkman

illustrated by Charlie Adlard

Image Comics (2006)

136 pages

ISBN 158240612X

It had been some time since I last read
The Walking Dead series, so I thought it was time to go and
pick up where I left off. As I recall, the fourth edition was pretty
exciting and particularly tense as the survivors found a prison and
tried to make a go of it inside its protective walls. I also recall
the women of the group forfeiting power to the men when it came to
all decision making. When I picked up this fifth volume, I had to
wonder if there would be anything quite so ludicrous in its pages.

If the four previous installments
highlighted how grim and desperate life was for the survivors, The
Best Defense decided to turn that dial up to eleven by
introducing a villain that strains the realism thus far displayed by
the characters.

When a helicopter is spotted flying by
only to crash somewhere in the distance, Rick organizes a search
party to look for survivors--and possibly answers. He takes Glenn and
Michonne and finds that the occupants of the chopper are gone, and it
looks like another party has found them. Not zombies, though. This
gives Rick some optimism that they might not be alone, and can
possibly bolster their numbers against the zombie hordes, so they
follow the trail. What they find is a walled off town that winds up
making the Thunderdome in the Mad Max franchise seem downright
quaint.

Meanwhile back at the ranch--I mean,
prison--not a lot happens. Carol's tenuous grip on sanity seems to
slip even further when she tells Lori that she loves her and Rick
and wants the three of them to become a polygamous family. Aside from
that, the only thing of note I saw was how the rifts highlighted in
The Heart's Desire were almost entirely swept under the rug.
The whole group seems to be in a holding pattern while Rick, Glenn,
and Michonne are away, basically idling until the impending showdown
with the Governor and his goons.

As for the Governor, the protector and
leader of the township of survivors, he felt like an extreme symbol
of what might befall Rick if his pattern of destructive behavior
continued unabated. Well, instead of Rick wrestling his own demons,
he now has an actual one to deal with by the Governor, a man so
depraved and sociopathic that he borders on the psychotic. Well,
let's just go ahead and call him a mad genius for convincing most
people in the town he's all rainbows and lollipops, while his core
group of henchmen know him to be ruthless and sadistic--and even they
don't know he has his zombie daughter locked up in his apartment with
a collection of zombie skulls. Yeah, the guy is bonkers.

I get that not all the villains in this
series are the zombies, but for such an over-the-top character to be
thrown into the mix feels like it takes a sincere effort and turns it
into straight-up pulp. Hey, I love pulp, but I thought The Walking
Dead was supposed to take a more grounded approach to the human
condition. It seems at this point, all bets are off and literally
anything can happen to these survivors. The Walking Dead has
never felt so much like a comic book than it has with The Best
Defense. I'm not exactly in a hurry to read Volume Six, either.